


Fire and Steel

by QuarterClever



Series: Scandibal [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Scandal (TV)
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, M/M, at all, background Alana/Hannibal, this is not a healthy relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-23
Updated: 2013-11-23
Packaged: 2018-01-02 11:06:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1056033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuarterClever/pseuds/QuarterClever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal/Scandal fusion with Will in the role of Olivia Pope and Hannibal in the role of President Fitz.</p>
<p>From <a href="http://hannibalkink.dreamwidth.org/2676.html?thread=5357684">this prompt</a>: "When someone (Frederick Chilton maybe) threatens Will that he'll release a sex tape he's somehow acquired of Will and Hannibal to the masses if he doesn't break off his affair, Will concedes. He then subsequently quits his job as DoC (which infuriates Hannibal)[....] But Hannibal is unrelenting and won't let Will escape easily.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire and Steel

“Turn it off.” Chilton’s mouth twitches at the bite in Will’s voice. He pauses the video but keeps the image of two men queued up on the screen. Will avoids looking at it with all the skill that comes from years of avoiding meeting anyone’s eyes.

“The two of you put on _quite_ the show.” His grinding teeth and pounding heart are making admirable attempts to drown out everything Chilton’s saying, but Will’s never heard anything so clearly before. “Honestly, I feel as if I should be asking you for a few pointers.”

“What _do_ you want?” It can’t be anything small and certainly not anything good. Chilton’s not as smart as he thinks he is (almost no one is as smart as Chilton thinks he is) but even he knows just how much leverage he can get from a tape documenting the president’s sexual exploits with one of his staffers.

Chilton’s leans forward, resting his elbows on his desk and steepling his fingers. “The way I see it, you’ve got two choices. The first is that you quit—your job, your…relationship—and let Lecter manage on his own without his precious Will Graham to help him manage his public image. You do that, and this tape stays nice and private. The second is that you keep working as Director of Communications, and this tape finds its way to every major news station. You’ll be able to help Lecter with the fallout, of course, and with whatever other crisis the nation’s facing, but it might be a bit difficult to field press questions when you’re too busy explaining just how it is you ended up taking your job description of ‘being a mouth for the President’ so literally.”

Will twitches at Chilton’s crudeness, pushing away the voice in his head that mutters ‘rude’ in such a resigned yet disparaging tone. “I can’t just quit.”

“Of course you can. Even better, come work with me.”

“You don’t want me working _with_ you, you want me working _under_ you.” The smirk on Chilton’s face tells Will that his guess—guesses, really—hit dead on. Will plunges on before Chilton can make his no doubt _hilarious_ rejoinder (“it’s a position you’re used to, after all”). “Whatever else you think, even _you_ have to admit the president’s not stupid. If I just quit and withdraw completely he’ll know something’s up.”

Chilton waves a hand, unconcerned. “Spin it. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

“I can spin it so much you’ll feel like you’re going to puke, and it won’t make any difference. If I just quit and cut off all ties altogether, that will be too suspicious. You want me to quit my job? Fine. You want me to stop being… friends… with the president? OK. I can spin that. But I _can’t_ spin me having no contact with the president ever again, me never _working_ for him on anything ever again. If a crisis comes up, Jack might call me, and I can’t say no to that. Not every time.”

“Not _every_ time.” Chilton doesn’t believe him.

“There’s a _reason_ Gideon lost in the primary,” Will snaps. Reasons, really, and at least one of them is how Chilton thinks Gideon, a man outshined by Hannibal’s _shadow_ , is his ticket to the political primetime. Given the current situation, however, pointing out Chilton’s mistakes isn’t the best idea. His eyes flicker over to the still-frozen image on the screen and something cold and heavy settles in his stomach. “Hannibal’s good, and I’m…good at my job. So believe me when I tell you that he’ll start looking for what’s really going on if I do what you’re telling me to, and I don’t think you want that. So I can stop _things_ but there’s not going to be a clean break, not right away.

It takes a bit longer, but eventually Chilton concedes the point. He doesn’t think to ask why _Will_ doesn’t care to have Hannibal figure out Will’s being blackmailed; Will doubts the idea even occurs to him.

 

* * *

 

It’s been three days and Will still hasn’t been able to bring himself to do anything. At least not about Hannibal—he’s managed to do more in the last three days then he has in the previous three weeks. He’s not so far in denial that he doesn’t recognize avoidance when he sees it. The problem is that no one else has any trouble recognizing it either. He takes another obvious bite of his Rough and Ready just as Alana starts to open her mouth. Her lips press together in a quick, thin line.

“Will, I didn’t go to Gettysburger—”

“You didn’t _send_ someone to Gettysburger,” he corrects. “The first lady doesn’t go on fast food runs.” He takes an even larger bite of his poboy as soon as the last, clipped syllable leaves his mouth.

“I didn’t _get you_ Gettysburger because I’m a huge fan of their Suffragette Salad.” She pokes a bit at the wilting lettuce to emphasize her point. “There’s something bothering you and I—”

“Thought I might tell you if you bribed me.” Alana’s shaking her head; maybe a bribe isn’t how she thought of it, but it was still her design. “I’m fine,” Will insists. All of the expression Alana normally hides behind her politician’s face suddenly finds its outlet in her single raised eyebrow. “Managing crises is what I do.”

“You don’t have to manage them all alone. People are here for you—me, Hannibal, Jack. I’m your friend,” Will’s hand twitches; some of his freedom fries fall to the floor, “and I just want you to know that I’m here if you want to talk. You did so much for us during the campaign, not to mention now. It’s the least I can do.” Will shakes his head, but Alana cuts him off. “It wasn’t just doing your job, no matter what you say. Your job was to get Hannibal elected, to help shape the image our marriage had in the public eye. And you did that, but you didn’t just fix how people saw our relationship, you helped fix our relationship too.”

Alana keeps talking, saying more of the same, her phrases peppered with psychiatrist’s buzzwords. Will doesn’t hear a word, staring at nothing and running one finger around the fading, shirt-covered bruise Hannibal sucked into his collarbone a few nights before.

 

* * *

 

“I’ll get Starling on it,” Will promises, scribbling down a few notes to himself. There’s no acknowledgement, and he looks up to find the president’s eyes fixed on him. He’s not surprised when Hannibal dismisses everyone only a few minutes later, just as he doesn’t need Hannibal’s motion to know that he’s to stay behind.

Will perches on the edge of the couch, trying to talk himself into it, although he’s not quite sure of what _it_ is. He watches Hannibal watching him—standing in front of his desk, arms clasped behind his back, gaze too intent—and doesn’t say anything.

“I wasn’t aware,” Hannibal says finally, long after it becomes clear Will has no intention of speaking, “that you had become so fond of delegating.”

“She can handle it,” Will explains with a shrug, “and I’ve been busy.”

“Yes. _Busy_.” The word is uttered with a stiff jaw as if he’s encountered something particularly distasteful. “So busy you could not even be bothered to tell me to expect your absence last night."

“I wasn’t aware such liaisons had 24-hour cancellation policies.” Will knows Hannibal can hear the snideness of his tone, knows too that he’s walking a disappearing line.

“Is that what this is, Will? A tawdry affair?” Will’s never sure if he just _can’t_ get a good read on Hannibal or if he doesn’t _want_ to. Probably some of both, but right now it’s not doing him any favors; he can’t tell if Hannibal’s amused or threatening or what.

“You tell me,” Will challenges, looking straight into Hannibal’s eyebrows.

“I think we both know better than that.” _Alana doesn’t,_ Will thinks, _your wife doesn’t know any of it_. “And I think we both know better than to believe you when you say you have been ‘busy.’ You’ve been preparing for crises that haven’t happened, and yet now you are passing on your actual work to your assistants? No, there is something bothering you.” Hannibal draws closer—ever mindful of his positioning in relation to the cameras—watching carefully as Will sucks in a rattling breath. He sits down on the couch next to Will, lays a hand on one knee. “Let me help. You’ve done so much to help me and—”

“I’m quitting.” Hannibal’s fingers clutch at Will’s thigh as if by reflex. “I quit. Resign.”

Hannibal’s hand doesn’t move. Neither of them breathe. Will’s trying to gauge Hannibal’s reaction through sidelong glances, but Hannibal’s face is the kind of blank that Will’s never seen on him before. It’s not the studied aplomb of his politician’s mask; it’s completely inscrutable, the kind of expressionlessness you find on models in anatomy textbooks. Aside from the tension in his arm muscles where he grasps at Will, he gives away nothing, not even the slightest movement or the barest hint as to where his attention is focused. Even if Will wanted to he’d have no hope of empathizing with Hannibal right now.

Hannibal’s hand unclenches. He stands with swift, precise movements, moving to lean behind his desk, resting heavily against it and supporting himself with the palms of both hands. “No.” He draws his gaze up from where he’s been studying the wood grain, eyes boring into Will. “No, you are not.”

“You don’t get to decide that.” The line he was walking has disappeared, vanished as soon as he said he ‘quit.’ Something’s dragging his stomach down to the floor, but he doesn’t have time for that now.

“You do not just get to decide _that_ ,” Hannibal hisses back at him, eyes narrowed. Will swallows around the words he’d like to say, about how he doesn’t need Hannibal’s permission to _quit his job_ , that’s ridiculous. He doesn’t—can’t—say any of that though.

“I’ve been neglecting my job, my firm. I _help_ people, I can’t just stop doing that.” Will Graham and Associates’ win/loss ratio is no less impressive than ever, but they’re barely taking a third of the cases they did before he joined the Lecter campaign. There are clients who need his help, and he’s no good to him where he is now.

“And you don’t help people here?” He cocks an eyebrow in an elegant expression of skepticism. “And what about you, Will? Would returning to that world help you or would it simply push you once more towards desperation? Do you truly wish to wedge open those cracks in your mind once more?”

Will grits his teeth. “It won’t be like that this time.” There’s more hope than conviction in his tone.

“That work isn’t good for you, Will. It takes your mind to dark places, places you cannot see well enough to find your way back from. Your work here may not always be the most palatable but it keeps you out of the shadows, keeps you away from the monsters.”

“No, here I just have to pretend they’re not monsters. That’s what politics _is_.” Hannibal looks as if he takes offense to that, and that’s good if for no other reason than it means Will’s starting to get a read on him again. “Pretending things are other than what they are, that’s politics.”

“Then we are all politicians,” Hannibal tells him, and if he were anyone else the words would be accompanied with a shrug. “And that does not exclude you, dear Will. You are pretending to quit for this noble reason, because you want to _help_ , but that’s not it at all, is it?”

Will can’t look at him. It’s not even that he can’t look Hannibal in the eyes—that’s normal—he can’t look at him _at all_. He squeezes his eyes shut as tight as they go. “It’s not just my job.” The words fall like the first few raindrops that signal the beginning of a thunderstorm. “I’m not just done with that, I’m… it’s us, this thing with us, that’s over too. I’m done with you.”

He’d thought the silence after his first pronouncement had been unbearable. That was mere heat lightning, but this… somewhere in the back of his mind he can hear hurricane sirens.

“No.” It’s a growl, thunderous in its intensity.

“I—”

“ _No_.”

“I can’t _do_ this anymore, Hannibal. I can’t be here and do my job and do good and I’m not, I can’t…” He trails off, knowing if he keeps going his voice will break on a sob.

“What you can’t do,” Hannibal corrects in an icy voice, “is decide that our relationship is over without so much as asking me.”

“That’s not how this _works_. You need the consent of both people to start a relationship, sure, but you need the consent of both people to _stay_ in the relationship, not to leave it.” That’s not what he wants to say, not really, but both the air and Hannibal’s gaze are heavy and he can’t think.

“And you did not even think this was worth discussing? There was no reason to tell me that there might be a problem?”

“There’s not a—”

“Do not,” Hannibal says, “lie to me.”

Will swallows. He can’t tell Hannibal the truth of it, but hedging isn’t working. He’s going to have to tell half-truths, pretend things are other than what they are without actually lying. _Politics_ , he thinks bitterly.

“You have a wife.” Hannibal’s expression shifts to one of slight bemusement. “A wife who is also my friend. You’re cheating on you’re wife with her friend. I’m having an affair with my friend’s husband. That’s… that’s the problem.”

“Alana is unaware of the nature of our relationship.”

“That doesn’t matter!” Will feels as if he might snap; he’s not sure if it’s from rage or the tension of having to play this out.

“She is unaffected by this, Will. Our marriage has never been one of conjugal bliss or devotion. Even with the state of our relationship having been recently improved, we are more akin to colleagues than lovers.” Will’s honestly not sure if that’s true at all or even at least true on Hannibal’s side. It doesn’t matter to him however which way. It doesn’t.

“Do you know why I’m so good at my job, Hannibal? Do you? It’s because I can picture myself, imagine myself, as someone else. I can see their protests and counter them before they ever make them. And that’s not something I can just turn off.”

“I know this, Will.”

“But you don’t _understand_. It means that whenever I see Alana, every time I look at her, I know what she’d think. If she knew, if she found out. I know how she would feel, and Ifeel that too. And I can’t _live_ like that anymore, sneaking behind her back. I can’t do that to me, I can’t do that to Alana, I can’t do that to you. It’s not fair to any of us.”

“Will—” It’s three steps for Hannibal to get around the desk and reach for Will. He doesn’t even take one before Will jerks back from a hand that has barely begun move towards Will’s face.

“No. _No_.” Will stumbles back, fumbling for a doorknob that’s still several paces behind him. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“Just tell me this, Will,” Hannibal doesn’t stop moving towards Will, though he slows his pace, “This gift of yours, what is it telling you to say to me now? What words can you give me that will convince me to just let you go?”

Will lets out a broken sob. “Tell me what to say and I’ll say it.”

“That’s not how the game works, Will.” If Hannibal were more clichéd, he’d rest one on the doorframe above Will’s head and lean in too close. As it is, all he does—all he needs to do—is stand well within the bounds of decency and stare at Will all too intently.  “If you want me to let you go, use that wonderful empathy of yours to convince me.”

“I can’t.” Hannibal raises one eyebrow. Will sees it despite the fact that he’s trying to look anywhere but Hannibal’s face. “I _can’t_. Because it doesn’t matter _what_ I say, you don’t have any intention of letting me go.”

A smile crawls its way across Hannibal’s face in unison with the hand that strokes down Will’s. “You really are remarkable.” Hannibal takes a step back, pulling on the handle and allowing the door to swing open behind Will. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

Hannibal’s not particularly surprised when a resignation letter shows up on his desk the next day in lieu of Will Graham.

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for [this prompt](http://hannibalkink.dreamwidth.org/2676.html?thread=5357684) from the Hannibal kink meme. More to be added as I have not yet fulfilled the full terms of the prompt.
> 
> I'm doing my best to portray Hannibal and Will's relationship as unhealthy and not glorify/romanticize it while still showing how they feel about it, if that makes sense? But I don't want to give the impression that what's going on here is OK-- Hannibal in this fic is basically being creepy and stalker-ish and coercive and in real life that is so NOT cool or romantic or anything and I'm trying to acknowledge that in the fic while still portraying how this might work (even if it's not how it SHOULD work).
> 
> Also, while I love this prompt and think it's _genius_ , I am aware that essentially replacing one of the only black female leads on television with a white male, if only in fanfic, is problematic. That's why I'm going to be writing a fic that essentially reverses this, where Olivia Pope is a uniquely talented profiler for the FBI.


End file.
